Lego Hour STEM Challenge Ideas

If you read my post on our Lego Spinning Challenge Wheel, then you're familiar with our re-vamping Lego Hour at the Library. But here's a brief summary: This school year, we've put a list of different building themes on a spinning wheel and each meeting, one participant gets to spin the wheel that will determine our challenge!

This post is going to be a list of what those challenges are. A PDF copy will be attached below.

Full disclaimer: This list is compiled from different web sites and I can't take credit for the ingenuity of many ideas. If you're looking for fantastic STEM challenges, check out The Lego Librarian. His challenges are incredibly creative and several have made my list.

This is our new Lego spinning wheel that we've started using.

For the tutorial on how it was made, visit this blog post!

There are 19 different challenges.

When the time came to make this list and write them on the wheel, I knew I wouldn't be able to remember them all so each challenge got it's own envelope with a brief description written out.

Some description sheets have pictures to share with an idea of what the end result of a challenge will look like.

Also, several of these description sheets involve other supplies that you'll need to be aware of and have access to on a dime's notice.

These are items such as blindfolds, marbles, a fan, water, etc.

This is a picture of my pile of envelopes and one description sheet.

Here's a list with links leading to some of the sites I took inspiration from...

My 19 Challenges
1. Spinner's Choice
2. Build a Scene From a Book
3. Double-Decker Races
4. Build Something From the Future
5. Alphabet Challenge
6. Build a Bridge
7. Group Masterpiece
8. Build the Tallest Tower
9. Build a Zoo
10. Lego Charades
11. Build a Maze
12. Build a Wind Racer
13. Epic Marble Run
14. Water Works
15. Ramps and Slides
16. Blindfold Builds
17. Build a House on Stilts
18. Turtle Races
19. Build a Castle With a Working Drawbridge

Click here for the PDF file of my list and printable description sheets

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Lego Hour Challenge Wheel

For the new school year, our LEGO Hour program got revamped.

These past few months, instead of challenges, we've been having Free Build days where kids come in and build whatever their hearts desire. You can imagine, after a while that gets old.

To add a new interactive element to the program, I designed a Lego wheel to determine our monthly challenges. Listed on the wheel are 19 different themes. One lucky attendee gets to spin the wheel each month to see what our challenges are (usually whoever has a birthday that month).

Here's a brief tutorial on how I built the spinning wheel.

HOW-TO MAKE A SPINNING WHEEL

Supplies Used:

• Foam Board
• Cardstock Paper
• Cardboard
• Dowel Rod (small piece)
• Thumb Tack
•  Hot Glue & Stick Glue

My goal was to make a Wheel of Fortune type wheel that would spin and come to a stop naturally.

Step One: Preparing Your Pieces

Cut a large circle out of the foam board for the base of the wheel.
Create the cover that will lay over the foam board wheel. I made triangles in alternating colors.
Cut several smaller squares to act as filler between the wheel and the cardboard background.
For the background, I used one pre-cut sheet of the cardboard. (That's how it comes in our book order boxes😄)

The foam board and cardboard filler pieces all got holes cut into the center of them. The hole was just wide enough for the dowel rod to fit through them and allow them to spin.

Step Two: Assembly

Decide where you want your wheel to sit on your background. Trace around it and find the center. It's important that you find center to have that stability as it spins.

Once you find center, build up height with those filler pieces.
Use hot glue to secure these filler pieces.

Dowel rod will need to be glued into center of the filler pieces. Be sure it extends out enough for the spinning wheel to sit on it. (My dowel rod was < 1.5 inches)

It's hard to see in this picture, but I also added a filler square to the spinning wheel. This is so both touching spinning components are cardboard.

This is also hot glued together.

At this point, you should have your background piece built up around the dowel rod keeping it in place and a support filler attached to the spinning wheel.

Set the wheel over-top the background piece with the dowel rod coming through.

Make sure the dowel rod lays flush with the top of the wheel.

Step Three: Make it SPIN

To make it spin, I hammered a thumb tack into the center of the dowel rod.

As an extra level of precaution, once the hole was made by the tack, I removed it, added a dot of hot glue to the rod and put the tack back.

This connects the tack to the background piece while leaving the spinning wheel free floating and allowing it to spin.

Attach the decorative cover to the front and you're done!

Also check out....

Credit for the inspiration goes to ArtsyFartsyMama. 

For details on the LEGO challenges used on this wheel, check out this post.

For NEW (2021) Lego challenge ideas click here.

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Hedwig Flying Kite Craft

 

 This was inspired by Japanese Windsock crafts. 

It's very simple, and the perfect for outdoor weather! 

I'm afraid I don't have step-by-step pictures for this tutorial, so I'm just going to share what I do have: the instructions and the owl template

Prep work: 

For this craft, I had owls printed and already cut out on cardstock paper. 

You will also need.... A hole punch, yarn, dowel rods (in the example I used a pencil), crepe paper, scissors, tape, glue and crayons.

Instructions are just like they are listed above. That's the print-out I had on the craft table.

Further down the road, I might try to re-create this craft to collect step by step pictures, but hopefully it's straight forward enough for you to get the gist!

CLICK HERE for Printable Owls

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Harry Potter Book Club

A while back our library had a Harry Potter book club for tweens, where we read through the entire series. Several different families expressed a desire for a book club for a younger audience, so this school year that's our aim!

 Since this is with a younger crowd, I didn't want to discourage anyone so instead of reading the series, we're choosing different wizarding world elements and discussing them. For instance, for our first meeting, instead of talking about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone we just talked about Hogwarts Castle. Next month we're talking about Hogwarts Professor's and classes.

HOGWARTS HOUSE SORTING
The first order of business in any Harry Potter Book Club is sorting the kids into different houses.

Our group was sorting by choosing a cupcake, each filled with a small spot of different food coloring: red for Gryffindor, blue for Ravenclaw, yellow for Hufflepuff and green for Slytherin.

If you look up "Sorting House Cupcakes" on Pinterest, you'll find other bloggers who have done this. I can't take credit for this idea.

For the toppers, I printed off Sorting Hats on Publisher, cut them out and glued them together with a toothpick in the middle.

Remember to print off equal amount of mirror imaged Sorting Hats so when you put wrong sides together, they match. 

Once individuals are sorted, they each get a house badge to wear and keep. 

REJECTED HOUSE SORTING IDEA
One sorting idea I was playing around with was a quiz.

 The idea behind this quiz was, besides your standard school supplies you had to choose 5 things to take with you to Hogwarts. What would you pick?

Kids would choose 5 different items from this list. Each item was assigned one specific house, which I had a master key of what object was assigned where.

Where ever the majority of the chosen items were from would determine what house you were in.

Here's a PDF to the quiz and answer sheet.

Ultimately, I felt like this didn't have the umpth I wanted for a sorting activity.

Maybe you can find a use for it!


HOUSE CUP POINTS

Throughout the duration of book club, we keep up with house points on our chart.

If you come to book club, you earn your house 1 house point.

If you wear your badge to book club, you earn your house 1 more house point.

House points can also be earned through other little things throughout the meeting.

At the end of the year, whichever house has the most house points wins a special prize!

HOGWARTS CASTLE QUIZ

Because we were discussing Hogwarts Castle for this meeting, we decided to test the group to see who could name the most rooms inside the Castle.

We split off into groups and they were given 5 minutes to come up with as many different rooms as they could.

I was fully expecting someone's list to read:

Gryffindor Common Room
Gryffindor 1st year boy dorms
Gryffindor 1st year girl dorms
Gryffindor 2nd year boy dorms
Gryffindor 2nd year girl dorms
Gryffindor 3rd year boy dorms
Gryffindor 3rd year boy dorms

And so on and so on, but no one did it!

OWL CRAFT

Our craft idea came from Amanda at A few Shortcuts. I wanted to do something super simple since it was out first meeting.

Check out her blog post for the video on how to make this adorable owl!!




Let me know how your book club goes!

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